Battle of Uhud

Uhud was the second great clash between the early Muslim community of Medina, led by the Prophet Muhammad, and the Quraysh of Mecca. It took place on 23 March 625 (7 Shawwal in the third year of the Hijra) in a valley beneath Mount Uhud, just north of Medina. A promising Muslim advance turned into a costly reverse, and the Quraysh left the field with the advantage, though without achieving their larger aim of destroying the Muslim community.

Almost everything known about the battle comes from early Islamic sources: verses of the Qur'an, hadith collections and especially the biographical and campaign literature (sira and maghazi) compiled in the first centuries of Islam, such as the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq and the work of al-Waqidi. The historian Chase Robinson has judged the basic narrative and sequence of events to be broadly authentic, while warning that some details, including the scale of the Muslim losses, are harder to establish.

After Muhammad and his followers moved from Mecca to Medina, relations with the Quraysh worsened, largely because of Muslim raids on Meccan caravans. In 624 the Muslims defeated a larger Meccan force at the Battle of Badr, where several Quraysh leaders were killed. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb emerged as the leading figure in Mecca and swore revenge. The following year he marched on Medina with about 3,000 men; according to Ibn Ishaq, several Meccan women, including his wife Hind bint Utba, came with the army to encourage the fighters.

According to the traditional accounts, Muhammad first preferred to defend Medina from within, but many Muslims who had missed Badr pressed for a battle in the open, and he agreed. About 1,000 men set out, but before the fighting Abd Allah ibn Ubayy withdrew with some 300 followers, leaving around 700. Muhammad placed his force on the lower slopes of Uhud, with the mountain protecting its rear, and posted about 50 archers on a nearby hill to guard the flank against the much stronger Meccan cavalry, ordering them not to leave their post whatever happened.

The early accounts describe the fighting opening with single combats in which members of the clan that carried the Meccan standard were killed one after another, among them by Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muhammad's uncle Hamza. In the general engagement that followed, the Muslims drove the Meccans back towards their camp.

At that point, the sources relate, most of the archers left the hill to share in the spoils. Khalid ibn al-Walid, commanding Meccan cavalry, seized the opening, overran the few archers who stayed and fell on the Muslim rear. In the confusion many Muslims were killed, Hamza among them, struck by a javelin thrown by Wahshi ibn Harb. A rumour spread that Muhammad himself had died; in fact he had been wounded in the face. The survivors regrouped higher up the mountain, where the Meccan cavalry could not follow, and the fighting died away. The sources add that Hind and other women mutilated Muslim bodies.

Estimates of Muslim dead range from about 62 to 75, while the historian Ibn al-Athir lists 85 names; the Quraysh lost perhaps 22 to 35. Many modern scholars regard the outcome as a Muslim defeat. Others, such as W. Montgomery Watt, have argued that the Meccans failed in their strategic goal and that their early withdrawal betrayed weakness.

The Muslims buried their dead on the field. The next day Muhammad sent a force after the departing Meccans, which Watt interprets as a show of strength. A Qur'anic passage attributed the setback to disobedience and the desire for booty, presenting it as both a punishment and a test. Abu Sufyan then built a wider coalition of tribes, and in 627 the allies besieged Medina in the Battle of the Trench. The battle also first revealed the skill of Khalid ibn al-Walid, later one of the leading generals of the early Islamic conquests.

Our 600 map shows Arabia shortly before these events, and the 700 map shows the Umayyad Caliphate in the century that followed. Today the battlefield lies in Saudi Arabia.